The hats, the blind man and the sunset

In Cartagena we bought a bunch of so-called Panama hats (the original place of these hats is a hot debate between Panama, Colombia and Ecuador....) and at the end of our stay in Baru we took a nice photo in front of the Atlantic Ocean posing with the hats (which now are on the heads of a bunch of students in Hamilton and London). Earlier we had take a few fun photos with the hats:

Our son Mark put this one on my facebook profile and Mary and I were surprised on the fun reactions people gave. How much impact hats can have.....

When I had a short work meeting in Cartagena, Mary walked around the city and noticed the man in the middle of this street. He appeared to be close to blind but did not use a stick. It was interesting to see how people just live past this poor fellow who seems to have been roaming the streets of the city already for many years. The beauty of this city contrasts with the sadness of this man....

I will leave you on this post with one of those beautiful sunsets we were fortunate to witness in Baru and all the reflections it calls up when we stare at such natural beauty....

Short vacation

I have been quiet for a few weeks, because my wife Mary came for a short visit and we used the opportunity to relax in a nice resort on the island of Baru just outside of Cartagena. We spent three days at the resort, two days in the old historic city of Cartagena and three days in Bogota.

Now it is back to work again for both of us, for Mary with her real estate business in Niagara and for me with the EFE program here in Colombia. In Cartagena we bought a few "Panama hats" for our son Mark and his three room-mates and Mary dropped the hats off already (Mark is on the right):

During the coming weeks I have meetings with my SENA colleagues and with the local CIDA staff. Lots of planning for the upcoming months of activities. I will also host one of my Canadian college colleagues, Patricia Bowron of College of the Rockies, for a few days of meetings in Bogota. In early May two SENA colleagues will attend a conference in Ottawa on small scale mining combined with a college visit in northern Quebec. In early June I will bring two other SENA colleagues with me to the annual ACCC conference (this year in Penticton, Okanagan Valley, BC), also combined with a few college visits in that province. In late June we have again visits to our project pilot communities in the south of the Bolivar province and the north-east of the Antioquia province scheduled...

More updates and posts in May.

Economic and Social Development

Earlier this week I wrote a post on the social inclusion programs of SENA, the organization here in Colombia for whom I am here this year as an advisor. Social inclusion is an essential component of any sustainable economic development in any country around the world. But that is of course not always obvious to all the stakeholders or to many of the outside observers. Take for example the photo I made today on my way to the SENA offices:

I passed this spot almost every day the past few months and never noticed the wall painting. On the right you see one of my favorite new food discovery restuarants (the famous "patacones"; go back to some of my earlieg posts). To the left of the Patacones restaurant, you see a piece of public art which says "MINERIA" which is the Spanish word for mining. You notice that the N is painted a bit higher and if you look well, you see that under the N there is a S. So you can read "MINERIA = MISERIA" or "mining is misery. The rest of the painting is an artist's impression of some of the misery...

Now think about that. Mining obviously - in all its forms from coal, to oil to minerals - has a clear negative impact on the eco-system where the mining takes place. Mining companies get all the time better and nowadays claim to be able to do "responsible, clean and sustainable" mining. There is a lot of dicussion around that, and I leave it to the experts. I am still a "novice" in the technical field of the mining. The sector of mining offers hundreds of thousands of formal and informal jobs around the world. In general that is seen as a good thing... as long as the work is humane, safe and reasonably paid. Again, a lot of literature on that aspect and its economic impacts. We all want our electricity and we all want cell phones and other products which all would not be available without mining.

So is mining all misery? Is it fair to make such a statement? Mining has - and probably will still continue to - cause lots of human suffering from accidents in mines to environmental side effects. The industry obviously has its two sides of the coin.

CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, has a variety of areas where its tries to alocate its limited funds. On the photo below, taken from its 2010-2011 annual report, you can maybe read in what sectors they have invested for social and economic development (if you can't read it, go to the www.acdi-cida.gc.ca website and I am sure they have this report there somewhere.

CIDA spends about 24 % on projects and programs in what they call "sustainable economic growth" in developing countries (bottom right part of the pie chart), almost $800 million per year. Our EFE program in Colombia (Education for Employment) falls under that category. The other sectors are Children & Youth (31 %), Health, Basic Education and Social Services (1 %), Ensuring Security and Stability (1 %), Advancing Democracy (7 %), Food Security (21 %) and "other" (15 %).

For each country (CIDA works in 20 selected focus countries) there is a different reality and each donor country tries to the best of their knowledge (and also keeping its own national and international trade strategies in mind) to respond. Let's have a look at Colombia:

Colombia with its 46 million people and very high economic inequality (see one of my posts of January) ranks number 87 on the international HDI (Human Development Index) list from the 187 countries listed. Despite that the gross national income per capita is one of the highest ones of the 20 countries where CIDA works (just over $9,000/year), they have also one of the highest percentages of its population living on less than $1,25/day (16 %). This is because there are more higher incomes in Colombia compared to most of the other countries where CIDA operates,but also more people who have little to nothing. CIDA spends around $30 million/year in Colombia, and the two main sectors are "sustainable economic growth" and "children & youth" (at some stage I will make a post on youth working in mines; a very complex and challenging topic; need a few more sleeps on that one).

Now let's compare that a bit with another country in South-America: Bolivia

About half of the gross national income per capita as Colombia while the absolute poverty percentage is a bit lower than Bolivia. In general less economic activities in this country. And CIDA spends almost as much money here as in Colombia concentrating on the same two sectors. The EFE program in Bolivia concentrates more on industrial and agri-business training. Mining plays also an important role in Bolivia, but the EFE program can not address all the needs at the same moment.

ACCC and CIDA also are implementing an EFE program in the Anglophone Caribbean region, an area with much less people but with a huge disparity of wealth (compare Barbados # 47 on the HDI and Guayana # 117 on that same list; lower than Bolivia even). CIDA has a focus in this region on security and sustainable economic growth, and spends in total about $10 million more than in a country like Colombia. The EFE program here has a wide variety of focus areas.

Let's move for a moment to another part of the world: Bangladesh. Three times the population of Colombia and ranking way down on the HDI at # 146 (of the 187 countries listed). Almost a shocking 50 % of its population live on less than $1,25/day and CIDA spends about double of the money in Bangladesh as its spends in the Caribbean region....

Mozambique - where I worked & lived for two years in the late eighties during their 30 years of civil war - is one of the seven sub-Saharan countries where CIDA funds programs. This country ranks even lower on the HDI list on # 184, almost at the bottom of the 187 countries. Needless to say that was caused by a terribly devastating civil war in a country which was already having a minimal economy to start with in the sixties shortly after its independence from Portugal. An amazing 60 % of its population live on less than $1,25/day and its gross national income per capita is less than $1,000/year; nine times lower than a country like Colombia. There is simply not much money in the economy of this country which has lived mostly of donor funding for the past decade. Recently the country has discovered large oil & gas reserves. A blesssing or a curse? Will their mining also cause again addditional human and environmental misery? What choice does the government of Mozambique have? Forever depend on the rest of the world or try to develop these natural resources and try to grow a "sustainabble economy"? Mineral resources have caused devastating civil wars in a country like Angola, also a former Portuguese colony. That country is still very instable as is one of its neighbouring country, the Congo (where one of the rare minerals used in cell phones is mined).

I am not supplying any answers here in this post. My objective is to show you how complex this all is. In Canada people argue strongly about "tar sands"and oil pipelines on one hand, and about how to curtail the national debt and at the same time maintain social programs as well as finance the protection of its many sensational national parks. Economic and Social development - in the ideal world - go hand in hand. However, we have seen that lack of ethics, greed and sheer ignorance has time upon time caused serious and devastating negative side-effects. Collateral damage for the good for all: the economy. As an eternal optimist and a avid reader of history books, I am convinced that over the whole we have become better at finding the balance, but I am sure many people would love to have a lively argument with me about that conclusion. Well, any time really.... let's meet!

I hope this post gave you some new insights and "food for thought" :-)

Monserrate... a view of Bogota from 3100 meters

One of the first things the Spanish did when they reached the place where Bogota is now a large city, was climb up the hill and build a church a few hundred years ago. This site is known as "Monserrate" and at 3100 meters altitude you have a very nice view over the southern part of the city which itself is at 2600 meters above sea level. During the week and especially on Saturday the traffic in Bogota is bad and this causes - like any other big city with too many cars and buses - a fair bit of air pollution haze. Also, during the current rainy season the clouds come and go (as does the rain) and the natural lighting changes every few seconds. I tried to take some good shots, but it was not easy...

On top of the mountain is the church which has every Sunday a mass. The first church built was destroyed a long time ago by one of the earthquakes, but this one is holding up well. When standing in front of the church some of the views are like this:

In the background on the next mountain is the statue of Guadalupe and to the left are beautiful green and lush mountains. Unfortunately these areas are not so safe for trekking and walks. The city gangs - which exist in any big city in the world with too much inequality - seem to rove around there looking for tourists whom they can help of their cameras and money. Maybe one day this national park area will be better. It is certainly a treasure waiting to be enjoyed by people.

Walking past the church is an area which on Sunday is super busy with families who walk up the mountain (some do it as a sort of pilgrimage). It has many small restaurants making popular food which is large in quantity and low in price. Hereby a few shots from this colorful area:

Walking back from the popular market style restaurant area, you pass the craft market which you can find in so many places in the city, and all of South America. Again, so full of lively colors:

Walking further down is an area with two more conventional restaurants. They are situated in a spot with beautiful views and one of the restaurants is only open for lunch with Colombian cuisine:

This restaurant has on the walls some great photos from 50 to 100 years ago in the city. Below is one of the photos of the old style of daily markets and one with a few shots of the mountain in the past:

 

After all the walking around it was time for my friend Javier Mora and me to have some lunch and we passed a real "asado" place. This is the South American "cowboy" style of preparing meat, and in Colombia it is common in the provinces along the border with Venezuela where the economy is dominated by cattle farms and oil production. This restaurant copies a bit of the style of that part of the country with its food and ambience, including the music and dance performances:

After the lunch we strolled around a bit more in the old center and I always love seeing people playing chess in the streets, so I had to make a photo. We also passed a language institute where our dear Mary Kilmer studied Spanish on a Fullbright scholarship (Mary and I have worked about 10 years together at Niagara College Canada on international projects especially the ones delivered in Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina). I did not know Mary had been in this building a few decades ago, but Javier pointed it out to me. So this one is for you, Mary Kilmer!

I close this post with a photo of the ICETEX building, an organization offering student loans founded about 50 years ago by Gabriel Betancur, the pioneer of student loan systems in Latin America. This was a change in a very elitist post-colonial time in this part of the world and it socialized a lot for people from lower income families who now could study higher education through a loan system.

Thanks Javier for keeping me company during a very enjoyable Saturday afternoon!

Social inclusion programs

Our world is still full of all sorts of inequalities. I recently read that 60 % of the wealth of the USA is in the hands of 2 % of its population (I have no way of checking such statements, but if it is remotely true, it would just be incredibly sad). There are multi-national companies which have larger annual budgets than governments of roughly one third of the world's countries. Still way too many people around the world live on that famous one or two dollars per day. But believe it or not, things have become better. Inequality is nothing new. It always existed and probably - to a certain extend - always will exist. But as responsible and caring world citizens we have to try to work towards better distribution of our combined wealth while also learning to become more careful with our limited natural resources. It is for me a humbling experience to work with some of the thousands of SENA staff members who take care of vocational training & education for 6 million Colombians each year. All the training they offer is free and it is financed through a system of industry taxes, a system which is becoming a bit obsolete around the world, but for the current inequalities in Colombia is probably still the best solution under the complex realities of this country.

SENA offers training courses and programs from as short as 40 hours and as long as two years. The organization has a wide range of so-called "social inclusion programs" for vulnerable groups of its population. In the photo above a program is promoted for "youth at risk". Many different types of training projects exist within that program alone: for youth of families who fled the guerilla war of the country-side during the past 50 years and now live in very poor areas around the larger cities, for youth of rural areas who in many cases are still very much at risk of being recruited by guerilla groups or criminal groups, and for youth of population groups who are still very much subject of a variety of discriminatory activities. Some of the SENA training center have programs for youth at the ages of 12-13 years and they call them "talentos" (talents). In addition to their regular school hours of their early years of middle and high school these kids get trained at SENA in high tech trades such as micro-electronics and bio-technology, just to stimulate their curiosity and to give their - in general low - academic self-confidence a huge boost. In one of my posts of January I described some of this (Tecno Parque post).

The communications team of SENA works hard to make the public aware of these programs. On this publicity board there are programs explained for victims of land-mines, for war veterans and for new women entrepreneurs. If you can read Spanish, go to www.sena.edu.co and you can read quite a bit about the wide variety of programs SENA offers around social inclusion programs. I think they ran out of funding recently, but they even had their own micro-credit program for a while.

During the past three months I have learned a lot more about the political complexities of Colombia. Today we had a meeting at the National Ministry of Mines to discuss how we can work together in our EFE program pilot region. As I described, the informal mining of minerals such as gold and the unregulated use of mercury is already causing huge environmental and public health damage. It is just one of the many programs the Ministry is working on together with SENA. Our Canadian funded EFE program will accelerate the introduction of new training programs to reduce the use of mercury in that specific region where the Ministry so far had not been able to do much. It must sometimes feel for them to swim up against the stream, but it is always encouraging to see the passion people put into making situations better and more regulated.

On this specific Friday afternoon, I lean back and think how amazing it is to be able to take part in this work and show a little bit of international solidarity. My contribution is really only very small, and our Canadian funded program is just a drop in the ocean of needs. But this drop already starts to show some excellent "ripple effects"......

Hope you all will have a good weekend!